Clavier Jahuaty, Ig§7 $Z 12 CLAVIER / JANUARY 1987 John with His Father in 1947
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Clavier Jahuaty, ig§7 $z 12 CLAVIER / JANUARY 1987 John with his father in 1947. .fife with. ‘Tat ft er his month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Rubinstein, whom many con sider the greatest pianist who ever lived. His son, actor and composer John Rubinstein, reminisced about what it was like to grow up with an il lustrious father. When he acts as an interviewer for the series “A.T.&.T. Presents: Carnegie Hall Tonight,” Rubinstein says he simply asks what he would like to know. I followed exactly those guidelines in this interview and Rubinstein answered my questions with unusual candor and a willingness to share personal feelings, giving us one of the most affectionate, intimate, and fascinating portraits of his father to date. “My father was larger-than-life, a man who ex perienced life in such a voracious way that not much slipped through his fingers. He enjoyed everything — the weather, a movie he was 7 watching, a meal he was eating, good company, himself, a book — fully. His ability to concen trate set him apart, and obviously that was true at the piano. There was no break between the professional and the private family man. He was intense all the time, but when he was playing, something was added to him — a kind of purity. Nothing else interfered with his playing as things do in life, no other emotions. There was only one side to him at the piano, and this purity went straight from his mind and heart into his music, and from the music to the audience in one straight line. The moment he wasn’t playing he became multifaceted.” Apparently John never experienced the frustra tion of wanting the public figure to transform himself into the private father. “Don’t forget that when I was born he was almost 61, so he was from a different generation. He was born in the 1880s, and in those days people didn’t discuss and continually analyze The Child. Now it’s ‘How is The Child feeling about this?’ and ‘What effect does the parents’ behavior have on The Child?’ I have two children, and I’m always asking myself these questions. People of my father’s generation felt that the parents were the parents, the children were the children and were born to survive. Parents fed them, clothed them, gave them their education, and after that children were pretty much on their own. Parents didn’t sit around wondering whether they gave their kids enough ‘quality time.’ JANUARY 1987 / CLAVIER 13 “My father was more like my grandfather, and in the house. That gives you music. Then it’s a I accepted that. I never said, ‘Gee, Dad sure is question of what you do with it.” The siblings busy; why doesn’t he take me to ballgames?’ grew up “in two pairs,” as John puts it, about 10 This was my life. When he was playing the years apart. Eva and Paul are now in their 50s piano he was my daddy playing, and when he and John and Alina in their 40s. “Paul and Eva was having dinner with me he was my dad hav were both given piano lessons, but didn’t like ing dinner with me. I never felt ‘Ah, finally he them and stopped within a short time. My sister has stopped playing and is being Daddy now.’ Lali (Alina’s nickname, which means ‘doll’ in He was my daddy when he played in Carnegie Polish) and I took to the piano more. I could Hall and I stood there applauding him with the never sight-read well, though, and that always rest of the audience; I felt as close to him then infuriated my father, so I avoided playing as I did when the two of us were riding in a whenever he was in the house. taxicab telling each other dirty jokes. When he “There’s a difference, of course, between pian- traveled for five months, I really didn’t miss him. istic talent and musical talent. Eva became a My mother often stayed home and held things dancer; she danced with Agnes de Mille and together, but she also traveled with him and was Martha Graham, performed in Broadway musi always torn by her desire to be with him and to cals, and is now an eminent photographer. Paul, be with us.” who is also very musical, leaned more towards jazz and pop. He plays bass and piano, sings, and understands music, even though he became a stockbroker. Alina, a psychiatrist, is actually “I never felt, ‘Ah, finally he the best pianist of the four of us.” has stopped playing and is Being the youngest child in the family had its advantages for John. He spent every summer of being Daddy now.’ ” his seventh through seventeenth years with his parents on the concert circuit, going to parties with them, staying in hotels, eating in restau rants, and traveling throughout the world. What were Arthur Rubinstein’s practice hab “Those are the most formative years of your life, its? Were the children free to walk in and out? and while most kids whose parents were home “The piano was in the living room, but we all the time spent two or three months away at didn’t walk in or out. We grew up with an ap summer camp, I was with my parents all the preciation for concentration. There were no time. Maybe I was in the audience, or in a re rules, but we knew better than to distract or dis cording studio, or at the other end of a long turb him while he worked. The music just filled dinner table, but I was with them. Paris is very the house. He practiced relatively little. He much in my heart because I spent my summers would get up in the morning, have a long break there. I am a bicyclist, and the solitary part of fast, smoke a long cigar, read a long newspaper, my childhood I spent riding in and around the maybe even a book. A couple of hours before streets of Paris. I know every cobblestone and lunch he’d go down and practice, then he would many secret places.” Aniela Rubinstein, John’s take a long lunch, long coffee, long cigar, and mother, still lives in the apartment on the maybe have a long talk. In the afternoon he beautiful Avenue Foch. might go to the movies, or on some errands, and Surely a house filled with such music-making possibly come home and practice another hour and frequented by such houseguests as Picasso, or two before dinner, or maybe not. He would Stravinsky, and Ustinov could never be taken really practice only a couple of hours a day, for granted. “Wrong! Sure we took it for though when he had a big recording session or granted. If you grow up in Buckingham Palace concert coming up, or new pieces, he would find and you’re the Prince of Wales, that’s who you more time. When he had an appearance with an are. Children take their lives for granted. Now, orchestra, he’d find time for rehearsals, but he the older I get and the more I reflect on it, I see was never one to practice hour after hour after myself as having had a privileged upbringing. hour. He did it more or less as he needed it, and My father’s playing was special, as abused as usually before lunch.” that word may be. I truly believe that he stood out, and will continue to, as one of the greatest instrumentalists and interpretive artists of all ¿T ohn is the only one of the four Rubin- times. His artistry stands out for everybody: I stein children who made music a part of whether they only heard him once, came to his his career, although his brother and concerts year after year, whether they heard him sisters were also musically inclined. “We had in his 30s, or in his 80s, or hear him only now music pumped into our blood just by having it on the radio. So to have spent 17 major years 14 CLAVIER / JANUARY 1987 and quite a few periods afterwards hearing such extraordinary music in the house was special — John R ubinstein just to hear a difficult Rachmaninoff passage played 39 times in the next room!” pages for him all night. I think he felt I was John recalls an episode when father and son wasting my time listening to lightweight Verdi were in Rome. Rubinstein was recording Cho when I could have visited one of the wonders of pin, and he urged his teen-aged son to take a the world. Perhaps if it had been Meistersinger he side trip to Pompeii. John, however, did not would have understood. That was his favorite want to traipse over the ruins alone and insisted opera; he even named my sister Eva after the on staying in Rome to watch Solti, Merrill, and main character.” In retrospect, John realizes that Moffo record Rigoletto in an airless recording neither he nor his father were aware that these studio from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. “Then my father recording sessions were among his most impor- would show up at that studio at 7:30 and start recording the Chopin waltzes and I would turn Broadway, television, and film actor; composer and musician; director and radio interviewer are all composite descriptions of John Rubinstein’s career.